Yeah, I'm very curious. In a way I would say I meet both yours and Horatio's descriptions (in different senses, obviously, else it would just be a contradiction). The reason I think this is natural is actually that it's built into the nature of compassion, which involves two crucial things:
- a consideration for another's suffering
- an understanding of another's emotional life
Crucially, compassion is odd among feelings in that it doesn't introduce additional complexity into one's own emotional life at least directly (particularly if one prioritizes the cognitive aspects, more than the affective), and the emotion behind alleviating another's suffering is quite simple. Yet to tune into others' emotional lives, one has to be capable of processing complex emotional reasoning...but again crucially, it's more about creating a bridge than about having a complex emotional life more personal to oneself.
What this can imply is someone who is just kind might actually appear to be quite an emotional simpleton who just has a single emotional attitude, an uncomplicated gentleness and sympathy. And in particular, may satisfy criterion 1 (again, a kind of uncomplicated gentleness) and excel less at criterion 2. However, a drive to help others may correlate with a tendency to improve skill at criterion 2 (and it may even be that in practice, both tend to come together since they can be mutually beneficial).
In my case, I certainly have a greater emotional range than many (if anything, my strength of emotion is greater than my complexity of emotion), but not one of the most complex, and in some ways my successes with criterion 2, which I've been told I can do quite well with, tend to be that I can extrapolate simple emotional scenarios I've dealt with (through sufficient abstract reasoning) to other circumstances others face, and comment as such.
I'm a huge disbeliever in the need to experience things (at least beyond a point) and a huge believer in more abstract reasoning--at least relative to where most seem to stand.
- a consideration for another's suffering
- an understanding of another's emotional life
Crucially, compassion is odd among feelings in that it doesn't introduce additional complexity into one's own emotional life at least directly (particularly if one prioritizes the cognitive aspects, more than the affective), and the emotion behind alleviating another's suffering is quite simple. Yet to tune into others' emotional lives, one has to be capable of processing complex emotional reasoning...but again crucially, it's more about creating a bridge than about having a complex emotional life more personal to oneself.
What this can imply is someone who is just kind might actually appear to be quite an emotional simpleton who just has a single emotional attitude, an uncomplicated gentleness and sympathy. And in particular, may satisfy criterion 1 (again, a kind of uncomplicated gentleness) and excel less at criterion 2. However, a drive to help others may correlate with a tendency to improve skill at criterion 2 (and it may even be that in practice, both tend to come together since they can be mutually beneficial).
In my case, I certainly have a greater emotional range than many (if anything, my strength of emotion is greater than my complexity of emotion), but not one of the most complex, and in some ways my successes with criterion 2, which I've been told I can do quite well with, tend to be that I can extrapolate simple emotional scenarios I've dealt with (through sufficient abstract reasoning) to other circumstances others face, and comment as such.
I'm a huge disbeliever in the need to experience things (at least beyond a point) and a huge believer in more abstract reasoning--at least relative to where most seem to stand.
